1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to televisions, video cassette recorders and remote controllers for controlling televisions and video cassette recorders and the timer preprogramming feature of video cassette recorders (VCRs) for recording programs.
2. Description of the Related Art
Cable channel systems and satellite television channel transmission systems are providing an increasing number of channels for television viewing. As the number of channels available to a viewer increases, the burden on the television user increases. For example, in the past a user could switch between less than 10 channels to determine the programs that are playing and to select a channel for viewing. In today's systems, the hundred and fifty to two hundred channels available make this a virtually impossible task. Many of today's users aimlessly switch channels via a remote controller, which is a process sometimes referred to as channel surfing, to find a channel with programming of interest. Sometimes the user merely wishes to watch news or sports but must switch through all of the channels before a channel with news is found. It would be more convenient if the user could surf through channels having only news. For example, if the user could surf through channels such as CNN, HEADLINE NEWS, and KABC, then the user's chances of finding a news program of interest would be increased. The user may also be interested in seeing only channels with certain types of movies.
Another desire of many parents is to control their children's viewing of television. On cable and satellite television many programs are available which may be objectionable to a parent. The parent may prefer to restrict viewing on the television to only programs with a G rating.
Many modem TVs and VCRs have a setup procedure, generally called "channel skipping," in which a user can request a tuner to tune through all channels, but skip those which do not have a signal. Some TVs also allow a user to setup the TV to tune to only favorite channels.
Since so many channels are available, manually setting up a television or remote controller to only scan through certain channels may be a prohibitive task. For example, if there are fifty favorite channels then the user would have to manually enter fifty channels. This could be quite time consuming. The setup is further complicated by the fact that programming on stations changes from day to day or week to week. Each time the programming changed, the user may have to re-enter the "favorite" channels.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,079 issued Aug. 2, 1994, which is incorporated herein by this reference as though set forth in full, describes apparatus and methods for using compressed codes for recorder preprogramming. As described in the patent, one of the steps is to map an assigned channel to a local channel number. In order to set up the apparatus for using compressed codes for recorded preprogramming, the user must enter data into a table that is used for mapping assigned channel numbers to local channel numbers. For systems with up to two hundred channels, entering the data for the channel mapping table can be a tedious task.